With a successful career as an entrepreneur already established, Duncan Bannatyne shot to fame on BBC’s Dragon’s Den. He told us how love inspired him to kick-start his career as an entrepreneur.

He said: “Then, when I was 30 years old, I was penniless and I didn’t have a bank account. I met a girl who I fell in love with and I decided I wanted to have a family.

“You need money to bring up children and to put them through school, so I bought an ice-cream van and started selling ice-cream. I became an entrepreneur from that. I had to have a bank account to pay my suppliers, and that was it, I just took off from there, and I really enjoyed it.”

‘You are born an entrepreneur’

We also spoke to Bassim Haidar. Bassim founded the Channel IT Group in Nigeria in 2003. It’s a diverse group of companies that play a major role in bringing infrastructure, technologies and services to emerging markets. He explained that all entrepreneurs are born, not bred.

Bassim said: “Actually, you never become an entrepreneur, you are born an entrepreneur. You just get on with life and opportunities start coming your way because you think like an entrepreneur without actually knowing it.”

Finally, we asked Troy Collins, CEO of Endource – an exciting service that allows you to ‘shop every product featured in fashion’s most stylish magazines and blogs’.

Tory said: “I guess, when I was at university I had a burning desire to work for myself, and that was right at the beginning of the internet era. It wasn’t something that I decided to do, just something I knew I wanted to do. Throughout my career I took steps towards starting my own business, having moved from Australia to London to work, and here I am 15 years later still doing it.”